AHC - Create an Arabic-German equivlent of Yiddish

Not sure of the pre-1900 PODs involved though the challenge is to create an Arabic-German equivalent of Yiddish, including a suitable name for the ATL language.

Ideally it should feature a High German-based (or Germanic-based) vernacular fused with elements taken from Arabic and Aramaic as well as from Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages, written in Arabic script (with similar orthography to Yiddish orthography).

Arabic Afrikaans seems to be the only known Germanic language to have been historically written in Arabic script in OTL, despite appearing much later than desired (with Arabica being a South Slavic example).

Maltese gives a rough idea of am after in spite of being deeply influenced by Romance languages, as opposed to High German or the rest of the Germanic language family.
 
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Anawrahta

Banned
How about Hischasse?
Descendents of a community of Hijazi traders settled in hamburg during 17th century as an attempt by the Hanseatic league to rebuild its competitiveness. It is a hybrid of both low german and Hijazi arabic.
 
Yiddish is essentially a Germanic language with various Hebrew elements. Maltese, however, is not a Romance language--its core structure is still Semitic. So the two cases are rather different.

For an equivalent to Yiddish, you would need a somewhat arabized Germanic dialect that acquires a literary tradition of its own. That is unlikely to happen after the advent of modern schooling, which establishes a national written standard (Hochdeutsch in Germany's case). So a Medieval POD would work best. Perhaps we could have an Arab-speaking religious minority flee en masse to Germany to escape persecution. I can't imagine Muslim heretics choosing to do so, and any Jews would likely be absorbed into the established Ashkenazi communities. That leaves Christians as an option. They would ideally have some rallying point to form an identity around, perhaps their "heretical" faith (miaphysite, syriac, or orthodox).

An equivalent to Maltese, on the other hand-- that's going to be difficult, as it would require a population of Arabs to be conquered and then ruled for centuries by Germans. Perhaps butterfly away Barbarossa's premature death in the Third Crusade, then after its conclusion have at least part of his army stay behind in the Levant, either carving out a new principality for themselves or swamping an existing one. Have this state survive for at least a few centuries (perhaps with a Ragusa-type relationship with an inland Muslim power) and you end up with a heavily German-influenced Arabic spoken in a handful of port cities.
 
Yiddish is essentially a Germanic language with various Hebrew elements. Maltese, however, is not a Romance language--its core structure is still Semitic. So the two cases are rather different.

Am aware of the dissimilarity, however Maltese is mentioned as being heavily influenced by Romanace languages and provides a partial example of what am after with regards to a Germanic language with Arabic elements or an Arabized Germanic language.

For an equivalent to Yiddish, you would need a somewhat arabized Germanic dialect that acquires a literary tradition of its own. That is unlikely to happen after the advent of modern schooling, which establishes a national written standard (Hochdeutsch in Germany's case). So a Medieval POD would work best. Perhaps we could have an Arab-speaking religious minority flee en masse to Germany to escape persecution. I can't imagine Muslim heretics choosing to do so, and any Jews would likely be absorbed into the established Ashkenazi communities. That leaves Christians as an option. They would ideally have some rallying point to form an identity around, perhaps their "heretical" faith (miaphysite, syriac, or orthodox).

An equivalent to Maltese, on the other hand-- that's going to be difficult, as it would require a population of Arabs to be conquered and then ruled for centuries by Germans. Perhaps butterfly away Barbarossa's premature death in the Third Crusade, then after its conclusion have at least part of his army stay behind in the Levant, either carving out a new principality for themselves or swamping an existing one. Have this state survive for at least a few centuries (perhaps with a Ragusa-type relationship with an inland Muslim power) and you end up with a heavily German-influenced Arabic spoken in a handful of port cities.

Agree on a Medieval POD or few being the best approach to take, whether via scenarios ranging from a screwed/frustrated-Islam, heretical Christian sects (or perhaps another non-Christian/Jewish religious group) migrating to Germanic speaking areas and carving out their own niche speaking an Germanic tongue with various Arabic elements as a literary language (potentially as a preferable less distrusted minority), the descendants of Christian Germanic crusaders surviving to the present speaking a Germanic-Arabian language (as opposed to the Arabized descendants of OTL crusaders a number of whom assimilated into the Christian populations of the region) or some other ideas not yet considered.
 

Anawrahta

Banned
How about a form of arabized gothic in spain. Gothic may have survived in small enclaves in Iberia, and perhaps for other reasons it may become a germanic language writtern in the arabic abjad.
 

Anawrahta

Banned
Or perhaps the vandalic survives in tunisia, and it may become be rendered in an arabic script like the arabized gothic.
 

Anawrahta

Banned
I'm very skeptical of that claim and would like to see what source its writer had in mind.

For comparison, here is a fairly reliable one. What is has to say about the matter is not indicative of there being stable, long-lasting "islands" of Visigothic speech.
 
Frederick Barbarossa survives and wins the Third Crusade, becomes king of Jerusalem and brings at least a hundred thousand HRE settlers. The Latins are assimilated to speaking German and settle in Lebanon as the Crusader states decline, where they form the Arabic-German dialect.
 
What if the Transylvanian Saxons got their first printing presses from the Ottoman Empire, rather than from Germany?
 

Anawrahta

Banned
Frederick Barbarossa survives and wins the Third Crusade, becomes king of Jerusalem and brings at least a hundred thousand HRE settlers. The Latins are assimilated to speaking German and settle in Lebanon as the Crusader states decline, where they form the Arabic-German dialect.
Yummmmm. Pancake kebabs, and waffle tandooris. How about falafel sausages.
He would probably bring around 20,000 settlers. It would probably result in a roman alphabet for arabic rather than arabic abjad for german.
 

Anawrahta

Banned
What if the Transylvanian Saxons got their first printing presses from the Ottoman Empire, rather than from Germany?
I heard that the literacy rate for ottoman empire in 1914 was like 2% after generations of modernization. Anyways it would be wooden block printing i think. Not sure.
 
I heard that the literacy rate for ottoman empire in 1914 was like 2% after generations of modernization. Anyways it would be wooden block printing i think. Not sure.

From what I heard such low literacy rates were only in the Latin alphabet. With the number being higher if you included Arabic script.
 
From what I heard such low literacy rates were only in the Latin alphabet. With the number being higher if you included Arabic script.
Makes sense. Arabic script was the only official one and latin script turkish wasn't invented until Ataturk.
 
In OTL, small groups of Askhenazi Jews immigrated to the Ottoman Empire between 1421–1453. Among these new Ashkenazi immigrants was Rabbi Yisak Sarfati who became the Chief Rabbi of Edirne and wrote a letter inviting the European Jewry to settle in the Ottoman Empire, in which he stated that: "Turkey is a land wherein nothing is lacking" and asking: "Is it not better for you to live under Muslims than under Christians?".

Many had taken the Rabbi up on his offer, including the Jews expelled from the German Duchy of Bavaria by Duke Louis IX in 1470. These Ashkenazi Jews quickly diluted into the already large Romaniot (Byzantine) Jewish communities that had become part of the Ottoman Empire as they had conquered lands from the Byzantine Empire.

The next major Jewish immigration to the Ottoman Empire will be the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain by the 1492 Alhambra decree (200,000). This General Edict on the Expulsion of the Jews also expelled the Jews from Sicily (1493, approx. 37,000), from Portugal (1496) and from Calabria in 1554. The Sephardic Jews eclipsed and absorbed the Romaniot and Askhenazi communities profoundly changing the culture and structure of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire. For example, Egypt received a large number of the exiles, who soon out-numbered the pre-existing Musta’arabi, similarly to other smaller Jewish communities in the Empire.

I know I am partially cheating, but Yiddish is a High-German based language. A larger Askhenazi immigration to the Ottoman Empire, following Rabbi Yisak Sarfati’s letter, seems to be a nice solution to create a Germanic-arabic vernacular. Of course, you need to separate them geographically and socially from the later Sephardic migrants to avoid an assimilation or you can find a way to outnumber them. The later method is hard, as you can’t easily find more than 200’000 Askhenazi Jews to be expelled en bloc, as they were far less numerous...

POD : I think that the example of the Alhambra decree and the use of the letter of Yisak Sarfati to demonize the Jews as Ottoman agents could lead to larger persecutions against the Askhenazi communities, especially in Germany and Poland. The persecuted Askhenazi communities and their survivors would have to flee to the south, as France and Spain were already persecuting them. Migrating to the Ottoman Empire would ben seen as their only solution to survive.

Of course, some Askhenazim will stay in Germany and Poland, where they will survive and continue to develop their original versions of Yiddish.

While the Sepharadim were mainly relocated to major cities in OTL, the majority of the Askhenazim would be relocated to the countryside and smaller settlements, as most of them would be peasants, artisans and often poorer than the Sepharadim. Only a minority of them would settle in major cities and be absorbed by the Sepharadim as in OTL. Later, they will be selected by the Sultan Selim I and his successor Suleiman I to settle and pacify the newly conquered peripheral territories in the Arabic peninsula and Iraq, creating urban (and later military) Askhenazi communities in the region, administrated by Askhenazi rabbinim and councils. In order to differentiate those communities from the European Askhenazi communities, the use of the ethnonyme Alamanim is recommenced by most specialists, which is why we will use it.

Politically and socially, the Alamanim quicklly thrived thanks to their status of middle men between the Ottoman Empire and the local sheikdoms. Unfortunately this statut turned them into a symbol of the Ottoman authority and let them vulnerable during early Arab revolts. After suffering from those repeated anti-Jewish/Ottoman revolts in the late 16th century, male Alamanim were allowed to bear weapons in exchange of military service, acting as a professional military force for the Ottomans.

Despite this, the influence of Alamanim intellectuals and philosophers on Arab nationalism shouldn’t be undervalued. Their nationalistic and militaristic vision of proto-sionism and European-based ideologies, such as anarchism and communism, greatly shaped modern Arab nations.

The Alamanim weren’t victims of the Shoah and escaped from the European pogroms of the 18th-19th centuries. This historical luck does explain why the Alamanim are now the biggest worldwide "Jewish" group. Nevertheless, they are still a minority in Israel.

The four biggest Alamani communities are still thriving in Medina, Basra, Baghdad and Damascus, despite the 1950’s and later migrations to Israel. Most Alamanim are still shunned in Israel due to their religious differences and their traditional acceptance of (Arab) converts, a bastardization for some of the most orthodox Israeli rabbinim. Many returning Alamanim later chose to migrate to Europe and the United States.

Religiously, contrary to Sepharadim, most sects of the Alamanim didn’t hesitate to proselytize and convert members of other religious communities, especially Sepharadim and Arabs, in order to safeguard their communities. The use of Yiddish and even Alamani during religious ceremonies, instead of Hebrew or Aramaic, is one of the common features of the Alamanim.

During the 18th century, various elements of Islam have also been appropriated by Alamani sects in contact with Wahhabism, like stricter modesty rules for women and their own version of the five pillars. It’s limited to the Arabic peninsula and Medina community.

The Alamani and their faith are nowadays religiously and culturally diverse. Even if it’s easy to distinguish between the most traditional or orthodox groups and the atheistic reformists due to their garments, it’s often harder to consider modern Alamanim as Europeans.

The social mixity and porosity between the local Arabs and the Askhenazi newcomers slowly developed the vernacular known as Alamani language, fused with elements taken from Yiddish and Arabic as well as minor traces and loanwords from Farsi and Kurdish dialects. This definition does explain why some linguists do consider the dialect of Alamani spoken in Tabriz as a proto-language, due to the massive influence of Farsi in its grammar structure and everyday vocabulary.

Alamani is written with a fully vocalized version of the Arabic alphabet.
 
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Have Valens settles Mavia and her Tanukhids in Moesia. They bring along their alphabet (I'm not an expert in pre-Islamic history, but IIRC, the Arabic alphabet is attested by 400AD, and it probably existed earlier) When the Goths come along, they mix, and adopt the Arabic script and some Arabic loanwords.
 
Have Valens settles Mavia and her Tanukhids in Moesia. They bring along their alphabet (I'm not an expert in pre-Islamic history, but IIRC, the Arabic alphabet is attested by 400AD, and it probably existed earlier) When the Goths come along, they mix, and adopt the Arabic script and some Arabic loanwords.

That is one idea, perhaps they embrace a heretical form of Christianity before migrating elsewhere in Europe.
 
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